Palestinian Textbooks Don't Vilify Jews, New Study Reveals

February 9, 2013

The Jewish Daily Forward

A landmark State Department-funded study has cleared the
Palestinians of demonizing Jews in school textbooks but contends
that both Israeli and Palestinian teachers use classroom materials
that distort the history of the Middle East conflict.

The study, described by its authors as the first scientific
analysis of incitement in Israeli and Palestinian textbooks,
contradicts a longstanding narrative among Israelis, American Jews
and others that Palestinians incite their children to violence by
depicting Jews as subhuman in their textbooks.

Several years in the making, the study was carried out and overseen
by a team of American, Israeli, Palestinian and international
education experts. It was commissioned by the Council of Religious
Institutions of the Holy Land, a consortium of Muslim, Jewish, and
Christian leaders in Israel, and received $590,000 in funding from
the U.S. State Department.

Its findings were released at a press conference in Jerusalem this
morning.

The Israeli government said it refused to cooperate with the study
and has denounced the findings as "predetermined," without
elaborating. "The attempt to create a parallel between the Israeli
education system and the Palestinian education system is completely
unfounded and lacks any basis in reality," the Israeli Ministry of
Education said in a press release.

The study's lead investigators defended their report, saying in a
statement that an international team of schoolbook analysts
confirmed that the study is "of the highest scientific
standards."

An official at the Palestinian Ministry of Education did not
respond to a request for comment by press time.

The study's first, and perhaps most surprising, finding is that,
for the most part, neither Palestinian nor Israeli schoolbooks
demonize the other people or refer to them as subhuman.

The question of Palestinian textbooks' portrayal of Jews has been
bitterly debated for years. More than a decade ago, the European
Union considered halting aid to the Palestinian Authority based on
its negative portrayals of Israelis in its textbooks.

As recently as last year, the Washington Jewish Week reported on a
dispute over whether Palestinian textbooks call Israelis pigs and
snakes. Over the past decade, the Israeli government, the State
Department and independent groups have produced wildly varying
reports on the contents of Palestinian textbooks.

The new study examined 94 books from Palestinian school systems in
Gaza and the West Bank, and 74 books from the Israeli secular and
religious school systems. There were just 20 instances of "extreme
negative characterizations" of Palestinians in Israeli secular
books and seven in Israeli ultra-Orthodox books, according to the
study. One such example in an ultra-Orthodox book referred to a
decimated Arab village, now the site of an Israeli settlement, as
"a nest of murderers."

Palestinian books had just six instances of these "extreme negative
characterizations." For instance, one book referred to an Israeli
interrogation room as a "slaughterhouse."

These characterizations, however, were extremely rare and
statistically insignificant.

"I think it's nice that (so few) have those extreme statements,"
said Bruce Wexler, the Yale University psychiatry professor who
designed the study. He said that previous accounts of Palestinian
incitement in textbooks were likely based on a small number of
highly political books, or on books no longer in use, those that
were circulated under the Israeli occupation authority by the
Egyptian and Jordanian governments before the Palestinians were
given control of their own education system in 1994. (The
Palestinians have written their own textbooks since 2000.)

"It is possible that some people have attempted to selectively
portray the books as worse than they are," he added.

A second finding is that both Israeli and Palestinian textbooks
portrayed the other as the enemy while presenting their own
countries in almost exclusively positive terms.

One ultra-Orthodox book referred to Israel as a "little lamb in a
sea of seventy wolves." Another secular Israeli book stated, "Since
its establishment, the State of Israel sought to make peace with
its neighbors, the Arab countries, through Israeli-Arab
negotiations" but failed because of Arab refusal to recognize
Israel's right to exist.

Palestinian books often described the Zionist movement and Israel's
founding as the source of Palestinian problems. The "Zionist
occupation and its usurpation of Palestine and its people's rights
comprise the core of the conflict in the Middle East," read one
textbook. Another said that "Britain sought the Jews' help to
achieve their imperialist aspirations, and so the Jews began
migrating to Palestine."

Some Israeli secular books also feature reflection on Israeli
wrongs. One detailed Israeli outrage over the killings of
Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in
1982. "The Israeli self criticism is quite impressive," said
Wexler. But for the most part, the study notes, "Historical events,
while not false or fabricated, are selectively represented to
reinforce each community's national narrative."

A third finding is that there is a lack of information about the
other in each sides' books. Fourth is that the negative depictions
and omissions of the other are most pronounced in Israeli religious
ultra-Orthodox books and Palestinian books. Israeli secular books
are the most self-critical of the three categories.

The researchers also examined maps in the schoolbooks, and found
that in 58 percent of the post-1967 maps in Palestinian
schoolbooks, the polity "Palestine" is shown, with its area
incorporating everything between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea, including present-day Israel. There is no
mention of Israel.

Conversely, 76 percent of the post-1967 maps in Israeli schoolbooks
show Israel as the area between the river and the sea, with no
mention of the Palestinian Authority, or notation of the so-called
Green Line that separates Israel from the West Bank and Gaza
territories it conquered in the 1967 Six Day War.

"This type of education can create a lasting obstacle to peace,"
said Wexler. "If you grow up seeing maps that seem to imply that
the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is
your homeland… and you are asked to give up some of that
land to make two states, you would feel you are losing something
that you never had to begin with."

Wexler's study was co-led by professors Sami Adwan of Bethlehem
University and Daniel Bar Tal of Tel Aviv University. Eight
bilingual researchers, half of them Israeli and half Palestinian
conducted the survey over a period of three years. To avoid
researcher bias, two-thirds of the Israeli books were analyzed by
Israelis and the rest were analyzed by Palestinians. The
Palestinian books were also analyzed by both Palestinians and
Israelis.

In order to analyze the books, the researchers isolated 3,000 units
of data found within - poems, stories, photographs and
illustrations. The researchers then looked at how the unit dealt
with certain topics, and to what degree.

The study urges both school systems to assess their textbooks in
light of the findings, and to consider, as a first step, adding
more information about the other side in order to humanize
it.